24. Chapter 24
Crowe
The sun comes up somewhere above four levels of rock, and I sit in a room where it makes no difference at all.
I’ve waited out daylight in places worse than this. Cellars. A grain pit outside Tulsa. Eleven hours in a chest freezer with the power off. This room has a bed and a chair and a lamp, and not much else. And I’m perfectly happy.
What’s different is that I don’t want to be anywhere else, even though there’s no work here for me to do.
Maybe there is, Crowe.
I sit in the chair with my back to the wall and go over what I heard in the hallway.
Somebody came along it last night, about twenty minutes after she left. Not toward my door. They stopped short of the last turn and stood there, then they went back up. Whoever it was walked carefully. A person who wants to be quiet in this mountain and knows how.
It could be a household matter. Somebody trimming a wick, somebody checking the stores. That’s the sensible explanation.
I also don’t stop turning it over.
It was quiet down here before. It isn’t now.
The mountain is awake above me in a way it wasn’t yesterday—boots crossing the same three floors again and again, something heavy dragged and set down, a door propped open that was shut before, so I can hear more than I did yesterday.
Somewhere over my head a woman is counting out loud, getting to forty, and starting again.
Something is being organized up there.
Deliveries. Three times before noon, a party comes up the outer stairs and unloads. I hear the crates. I hear the arguing about where they go. I hear a man laugh about something and get told off for it.
Nobody comes down to tell me what any of it is for.
Just after the middle of the day, somebody does come down.
He knocks.
“It’s Sereth,” he says through the door. “I’m a cousin of Kallista’s. I’ve brought you nothing at all, so you can open it or not.”
I open it.
He’s younger than Kalli, or he looks it, which in this family means nothing. Same dark red in the hair, cut short and tidy. Tall and wide through the shoulders. He’s got a cloth bundle under one arm.
“May I?”
“It’s your mountain.”
“It’s my aunt’s mountain. There’s a difference, and she reminds me of it.
” He comes in and sits down on the end of the bed without being asked, which nobody else in this place would do, and puts the bundle on his knees.
“I said I’d brought nothing. That was a lie.
It’s a blanket. Hesper says the room’s cold and Hesper is never wrong about a room. ”
“I don’t feel the cold.”
“Then put it under you. The bed’s terrible. I’ve slept in it.” He sets it on the chair anyway and sits back. “You’re Crowe.”
“I am.”
“Then I want to say something.” He pauses. “You brought her home.”
“I was contracted to.”
“I know. I heard my aunt offer you money in front of the whole hall.” He shakes his head once. “That’s her way. She counts what a thing costs because it’s the only way she knows to say it mattered. It came out wrong.”
“It came out fine.”
“It did not come out fine, and I’ve come down four levels to say so.
” He looks at me straight while he says it.
“I carried a corner of that casket. I helped put it in the ground. I’ve been to that stone more times than I want to tell you, and yesterday she walked into the hall on her own two feet.
So. Thank you. Not for the delivery. For her. ”
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“There. Done.” He puts both hands on his knees. “Now I’m going to be a nuisance, because everybody upstairs is being very careful with her and nobody will tell me anything. I’ve decided you’re my best chance.”
“I’m not much of a chance.”
“You’re the only one who was there.” He says it easily. “Where did they keep her?”
“A compound.”
“Where?”
“That’s Aurora’s business now, and the Nocturne Court’s. They’ll release what they release.”
“Fair.” He takes it without a blink. “Was it bad?”
“It was a cell.”
“You knew that was no use to me while you were saying it.” He grins when he says it. It’s a good grin. “All right. Different one. What does she actually remember? Of the start of it. The taking.”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“I’ve asked her. She said it was politics and changed the subject.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not being ghoulish. I’d like to know how much of it she’s carrying so I know how to be around her.”
“Then that’s a question for her.”
“You’re very hard work.”
“I’ve been told.”
He laughs, and it’s a real one, and I find that I like him.
“Last thing,” he says. “Then I’ll go and let you sit in the dark. In all that time—the year of it, the road, all of it—who did she talk to? Did she have a friend there? I hate to think of her being locked up and alone.”
“People at Aurora took a full account. I’d start with your aunt and let her ask them for it.”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve answered me without saying anything.”
“Then it’s a habit.”
“It’s a very good habit.” He stands and knocks the creases out of his coat. At the door he stops and turns round, his smile still warm. “You’ll be at the gathering, I hope. It’ll be a crush. Come and stand at the back with me and we’ll be unhelpful together.”
“What gathering?”
The smile stays on his mouth, but it goes out of his eyes for half a second. His hand tightens on his coat. Then he’s easy again, already talking.
“They’ll tell you. They tell the guests before they tell the household, usually, which is backward, but there it is.” He raises a hand. “Rest. Or whatever it is you do.”
He goes, his feet loud on the stone going up. He’s pleasant. Concerned. And he’s the first person in this mountain to ask what she knows.
I sit back down in the chair.
It could be nothing.
A likable man asked reasonable questions about a woman he helped bury. A lot of people probably want to know the same things. I set it aside. The counting woman gets to forty about nine more times.
Then two of the household stop in a passage that runs over the back of the stores, and I hear them talking, because there’s a foot of stone between us and stone carries.
They’ve got their hands full. I can hear the strain in their voices as they carry something.
“—the long room, then. Not the hall.”
“The hall’s for the clan. The long room’s for the two families.”
“Both families in one room. My mother will not survive it.”
“Your mother has been waiting thirteen months to bury a grievance instead of a girl.”
There’s a noise that’s somebody shifting a weight.
“When’s he expected?”
“Four days. Five if the pass is bad.”
“Four days. God help us all.”
“He’ll have been on the road since the runner reached him. You know what he’s like about being first at anything.”
“Poor woman. She’s had one night in her own bed.”
“She’s had one night in her own bed and a whole life knowing this was coming. It was set before she could fly. Nothing that’s happened since changes that.”
“No.” A huff. “So it’s a wedding. After the year we’ve had, I’ll take a wedding.”
“I’ll take a wedding,” the other one agrees.
They pick their load up and go. Their voices fade up the passage. Then it’s quiet, and I sit in a chair in a stone room and put it together.
They were talking about Kalli. There’s no doubt in my mind about it.
But that’s not what gets me.
There’s a man here for her. She was promised as a child. She’s known all along.
Now she’s back, and the arrangement stands. The man is on the road, and he’ll be here inside four days.
Fuck.
I sit there, and I don’t move for a while.
I’m not angry with her. It would be easier if I were. I’ve seen a lot of men make themselves feel better that way.
I’m a man who has just found out he’s stupid.
Because I care.
You’re a fool, Crowe.
I never once admitted it to myself. In the truck, in that cabin, last night with her against my chest—I never let myself think about it.
But my work finished yesterday, and I’d be out of here if I went to the mother and gave her my price.
I haven’t. Because I don’t want to let go of her. And she was never mine to begin with.
She didn’t tell you.
That’s the hard part. She had the whole road. She had a cabin. She had the climb up the mountain, a narrow bed, every hour of last night. She asked me what I do when a job ends. She let me answer. She said nothing.
And I’ve got it now from two strangers carrying something.
All right.
I get up.
I’ve done this a hundred times, and it goes the same whether the job ended well or badly.
You close it, and you go.
The pack’s already buckled. I go through it anyway, because that’s my routine. Two shirts, one of them ruined. The notebook. The pen. Three passports in three names, a driver’s license, and a folder of border cards. Money in two places. The blade I didn’t need on this job and carried anyway.
I take the coat off the back of the chair. If I go now, I’ll be down the mountain before dawn. I don’t plan to go to the Aldrake with a price. I’ll write to her and tell her the debt’s settled. It’ll annoy her, but she won’t be able to do anything about it. I grin without realizing it.
From the yard it’s two nights of driving to a town with a road out of it. I’ll put a call to the Court when I reach civilization. Faine wants to shout at me, and she’s owed it. After that, life goes back to normal.
I set the pack by the door.
Then I stand there with my hand still on it, because one thing doesn’t fit.
Somebody in this house put her in a blood trafficking ring and made it look like she’d died. They went to great lengths to do it. What stops them from trying again now that she’s back?
I could go up those stairs right now and tell her that I’m worried about this.
With what, Crowe?
I have nothing. Suspicion. A bad feeling.
And she’s never alone up there—every hour of her day has council in it, or household, or family; there’s always someone listening.
And if I share my suspicion that someone in the clan is a traitor, I’d be down the mountain by morning, and she’d be up here alone with him.
The pack is by the door. I sit back in the chair. And as hard as I think about it, I can’t come up with a workable solution.
It’s late when the door goes. Two knocks, quick, and it opens before I’ve crossed the room.
“Gideon.” Breathless. The way she says my name would melt my heart if I had one. She’s got her hair pinned up and something formal on, dark, with the collar high. Her features are drawn, and I get the feeling she’s been under scrutiny all day.
She’s got a jug in one hand, and she holds it up.
“They promised this was done properly,” she says, “so if this is bad you can take it up with me personally.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“It had better be. I’ve been rude to four people about it.”
She steps in far enough to set the jug down, and that’s when she sees it. The pack, buckled, standing by the door with the coat folded over it.
She doesn’t say anything about it. Her eyes go to it and stop. Then they come up to me with a question she isn’t going to ask. I don’t answer it either. We stand there for a second. Neither of us says anything.
“I can’t stay.” Her voice is level. “There’s a thing upstairs. I’ve already been gone ten minutes, and somebody will have counted them.”
“Go on, then.”
“Gideon…” She stays in the doorway with her hand on the frame, and she looks at me. “Tonight. Late. I’ll get down here.”
“All right.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“That’s all I’ve got.”
“I’m coming back.” Her eyes go once more to the pack, and back. “I am.”
“Sure.”
Her feet go up the passage and up the stairs. I stand there and listen until there’s nothing left to listen to.
The pack is by the door where I left it.
I sit back down and tell myself I’m not going to regret this.